@article{baker_manner_2025, title={A Portfolio of Trees in a Changing Climate: Using Signal Processing and Individual Tree Growth Simulations to Develop Mean-Variance Tradeoff Frontiers for Forest Establishment in the Southern United States}, volume={3}, DOI={10.5194/egusphere-egu25-20362}, abstractNote={According the the IPCC's 2023 Synthesis Report on Climate Change, global temperatures have risen approximately 1C since the the pre-industrial period, and there is significant uncertainty around future climate projections. Additionally, IPCC and related scientific literature find that the forestry sector is both vulnerable to and already feeling the effects of climate change. This work sets out to accomplish two goals. The first is contribute a new modeling approach that accounts of intra-annual changes in the variability of weather patterns on tree growth using signal processing and statistical modeling techniques. The second uses these models, in conjunction with climate projections, to develop a portfolio view of the forest through the lens of a changing and uncertain climate future. We leverage publicly available data from the USFS's Forest Inventory and Analysis Database, ORNL's DAYMET, and NASA's NEX-GDDP-CMIP6 to train models based on past observation and then simulate future growth based on 88 projections of future climate. Our models consider species-level reactions to site characteristics and weather patterns across the southeastern United States. Finally, we compare the performance of roughly 4.6 million forest compositions, across four species and two management scenarios, to explore the trade-off between expected return and the variance of said return in a Markowitz Portfolio Selection framework when optimiizing financial returns to timber and carbon production, respectively. Special attention is paid to the performance of different species and their relative prevalence in portfolios along the efficient frontier. }, author={Baker, Justin and Manner, Richard}, year={2025}, month={Mar} }
 @article{manner_guo_clutter_sodiya_abt_sheffield_baker_manner_guo_clutter_et al._2025, title={Globally Informed and Locally Refined: Market, Management, and Carbon Projections for the Southeastern United States Forest Sector}, DOI={10.2139/ssrn.5892503}, journal={SSRN Electronic Journal}, author={Manner, Richard H. and Guo, Jinggang and Clutter, Matt and Sodiya, Olakunle and Abt, Robert and Sheffield, Ray and Baker, Justin and Manner, Richard H. and Guo, Jinggang and Clutter, Matt and et al.}, year={2025}, month={Jan} }
 @article{nehra_baker_caldwell_martin_warziniack_manner_mihiar_frey_costanza_2025, title={The potential impact of forest loss on drinking water treatment costs in the southeastern U.S.}, volume={179}, url={http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-105014500953&partnerID=MN8TOARS}, DOI={10.1016/j.forpol.2025.103603}, abstractNote={Previous research shows that forest preservation can protect water quality, but it is less clear what the net economic costs of forest preservation might be for drinking water utilities. Economic valuation of forest benefits for drinking water is complex in part because the potential economic benefit is indirectly related to forest preservation through the benefit of forests for water quality. We contribute to a growing literature on land use-water quality interactions by linking ecological production and economic valuation functions that relate to changes in forest cover and water quality. We estimate potential avoided drinking water treatment costs by analyzing water quality impacts of projected land use change, using changes in nutrient concentrations. Specifically, we use observations from a survey conducted in the Southeastern US to explore which factors influence the variation in reported treatment costs. We then integrate the primary data with simulated outputs from a detailed ecological production function to project the potential long-term cost implications of land use change (including forest loss) in the region. Our findings suggest that a 1 % reduction in turbidity and TOC would reduce treatment costs by 0.046 %–0.091 % and 0.951 %–1.144 %, respectively. Further, while we find evidence of modest net cost impacts overall (<10 % for most facilities) under potential future land use change, we find a 1 % forest loss could increase treatment costs by 1.7 %. These results highlight the potential economic value of forest preservation in water supply systems and could inform source water protection strategies by water utilities through forest management incentives. Keywords: Forest Loss, Water treatment costs, Water quality. • Economic valuation and ecological production function related to water quality and forest cover were linked. • Converting forestland to developed land leads to an increase in Total Organic Carbon (TOC) and Turbidity. • Geographic heterogeneity in future cost projections with LUC suggests distributional implications.}, journal={Forest Policy and Economics}, author={Nehra, Arpita and Baker, Justin S. and Caldwell, Peter V. and Martin, Katherine L. and Warziniack, Travis W. and Manner, Richard H. and Mihiar, Christopher M. and Frey, Gregory E. and Costanza, Jennifer K.}, year={2025}, month={Aug} }